Imperial Overstretch: Germany in Soviet Policy from Stalin to Gorbachev

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Abstract The book focuses on the dynamics leading to the division of Germany – a process that occurred by default rather than design; the role played in that process by the Soviet Union under Stalin; the reasons why his successors, from Khrushchev through communist party general secretaries Brezhnev, Andropov to Chernenko, stubbornly clung to the division of Germany for almost half a century; their increasing realization of the “costs of empire”; the failure of their attempts to stop East Germany’s increasing dependence on West Germany; and the reasons, finally, why Gorbachev accepted the dissolution of the Soviet empire, abandoned his “strategic ally” and consented to unified Germany’s membership in Nato. The Soviet Union, the book concludes, had overextended itself in the attempt to maintain imperial control by the constant application of “hard power”. The lesson for today is obvious but Putin appears set to repeat the fateful course pursued by his Soviet predecessors.

Hersteller